alt Hacker NewsI realize this exact data might be novel, but haven't we know that till-reliant farming was detrimental to soil for a long time? The no-till people are a huge part of the permaculture movement, also theres always folks talking about how important fungal networks are and how they're largely destroyed by tilling.
I mean even Karl Marx talked a ton about soil health and while he mostly talked about "metabolic rift" not tilling (that I know about) specifically it seems like a similar focus on short term output vs long term soil health.
I guess I'm just not clear on if there is actually a new serious problem being "revealed" as the title says or just being substantiated further.
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Agreed. This hardly seems like novel information. The method at which he arrived at it is neat though, fwiw.
At the very least it adds a new vector to the position. I was also unaware of how receptive to disruption fiber optic cables were. So, at least I learned that.
If no till is better and tilling is work, why do farmers till? Why not do less work and have a better result?
After Marx’s philosophy caused a famine that led millions to die, you think he has useful agriculture knowledge to teach us?
The original article is markedly better at explaining that this is substantiation through direct evidence of soil structure in live fields, as opposed to e.g. core samples or whatever.
https://www.washington.edu/news/2026/03/19/earthquake-scient...